


those rose-tinted days

by virdant



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Chinese Culture, Ghost Marriage, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Season 3 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2020-01-01 06:08:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18330173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virdant/pseuds/virdant
Summary: Hannibal was nothing if not surgical. When he had spilled Will Graham’s guts all over his kitchen floor, his cuts were precise and accurate. Will Graham could have survived. Will Graham should have survived.Will Graham did not survive.When he arrived in Florence, he had a portrait painted and framed. He ordered sticks of agarwood. He married Will Graham while wreathed in smoke and ashes.To have and hold. For better, for worse.***Will Graham does not survive Mizumono.





	those rose-tinted days

Hannibal lights incense every morning, filling the walls with fragrant agarwood. The smoke permeates the walls, filling the cracks between the stone, faint trickle after faint trickle.

Will Graham stares back at him from the shrine, immortalized at thirty-four. He is not smiling. He stares flatly into the camera. The photo was printed from the Quantico database.

Hannibal busies himself with wiping down polished cedar surfaces, dusting the nooks and crannies of the porcelain bowl of sand, polishing the glass of the picture frame. He whiles away the minutes until an hour has passed and the sun begins to rise in the sky, casting its light across the planes of Will’s face. The glass refracts the light into delicate rainbows on its surface. 

Before he leaves for the day, he offers a plate, steaming, fragrant—one serving of a protein scramble, in memory. It is their one-year anniversary, today.

It has been one year since Will Graham died.

 

***

 

Hannibal was nothing if not surgical. When he had spilled Will Graham’s guts all over his kitchen floor, his cuts were precise and accurate. Will Graham could have survived. Will Graham should have survived.

Will Graham did not survive.

Hannibal heard the news from his layover in Munich, checking Tattlecrime with the airport wifi and vicious curiosity. He sat, very still, in the first-class lounge, while Bedelia perused the alcohol selection. She returned, wine in hand, to a very still Hannibal Lecter, tablet still opened to the image of Will Graham, naked, abdominal cavity spilled for the world to see.

When he arrived in Florence, he had a portrait painted and framed. He ordered sticks of agarwood. He married Will Graham while wreathed in smoke and ashes.

To have and hold. For better, for worse. 

Bedelia was the only person in attendance, as Hannibal offered their wedding feast, and burned the offerings until there was nothing left.

 

***

 

The dogs frolicked underfoot as Hannibal prepared the evening meal. They had been well enough trained that they didn’t actively interfere, but they stared yearningly at the food in hopes of scraps and ventured onto cool tile before being called back.

Will Graham sat in an armchair in the corner of the kitchen. In one hand, he held a glass of whiskey—two fingers, no ice. The other hand dangled over the side, to pet the dogs as they milled about.

“What did you make me this time?” Will asked.

Hannibal’s knife is sharp. “Heart,” he said.

“Heart,” Will echoed. He didn’t stand, to look over Hannibal’s shoulder. He just sipped his whiskey, stroked his dogs, and sipped his whiskey some more. Hannibal drifted over, occasionally, to ensure his cup was full, but it never emptied no matter how much Will drank. 

Earlier, Hannibal had taken the body of Anthony Dimmond and laid it out in the Norman Chapel in offering, folding the limbs like paper into the shape of an anatomical heart. He had burned paper offerings to Will, but Dimmond he left raw and bloody.

He crusted the heart in salt and roasts it, letting the low heat cook down the tough tissue. Will drank, and drank, and drank.

“Time and heat,” Will said, finally. “It’ll break down the toughest heart.”

Hannibal turned, studied Will. His hair fell into his eyes, he wore soft flannel and jeans worn thin at the knee. Even when dead, Will found ways to be contrary. “Tell me. Was your heart broken down?”

Will drank, and this time he didn’t respond.

 

***

 

He set up the shrine in the main room, Will’s portrait framed in gilt. The cabinet was an antique cedar, the wood dark with age. The handles of the many drawers were worn copper and brass, the beginning of a patina forming in the grooves.

Bedelia stood in the shadows, glass of wine in hand, and watched.

Will had never willingly made eye contact in life, and in his portrait, it was much of the same. He gazed into the distance, eyes unfocused so as to avoid direct contact. An inverse of the Mona Lisa—no matter from what angle they studied, Will Graham’s gaze slid away like water. Hannibal had commissioned painting after painting to capture this likeness of Will’s: a persistent memory of his darkening expression, his forts, his mind. No portrait artist had come close to Will Graham.

He purchased a pot of the finest china. He filled it with soft white sand, set fragrant agarwood deep. Each stick smoldered, filling the rooms with its fragrant scent. When each stick burnt down, he pinched out the stubs, smoothed the ash and sand down until smooth. 

He broke a teacup of the finest bone china and had it repaired, gold threading the cracks where it had split. He filled it with coffee every morning. At first dark and brackish like what Will Graham drank, from the cafeteria in Quantico, because it was what was offered to him. Then, a different roast, a milder brew, until he could make the perfect cup in his sleep. He cooked fine meats and served them on similar plates every evening: roasts steaming and fragrant, on plates threaded with gold.

There was a methodical routine to his mornings. There was a routine to his evenings.

There was routine, and there was Will.

 

***

 

“I would have liked to show you Florence,” Hannibal murmured, the two of them in the dark with no one around. Outside, the cicadas sang in their steady hum.

Will’s fingers tangled with his. Their breathing, in unison, hitched.

Will murmured, “So show me.”

Arm in arm, Hannibal walked the walls of the city. Their steps synced with each other, so there was only one pair of footsteps, heavy on cobblestone; one set of lungs, expanding and contracting; one heart, pumping in time with their steps.

Circle after circle, they walked the old walls of the city. From dawn, as the sun rose pink and golden, to dusk, the clouds dusty with rose. As night fell, and the chill rolled in, they pressed close together: for warmth or for the excuse of touch, neither of them were certain. Day after day, they walked until the soles of their shoes were worn down and their heels were blistered. Hannibal wandered each site, murmuring of the art, the architecture, the history.

Will’s touch on his arm was fleeting. “But what did you want me to see?”

He cut the heart from a pig, arranged the limbs. Spring had come, in all her glory, vibrant and warm.

Will closed his eyes, and saw—

 

***

 

Will returned home, with a clatter of dog paws on hardwood, the thump of a too heavy door, waders squelching on the ground. He smelled of moss and growth, like the dark spaces where only certain creatures thrive. Like the deep ocean, the sulfur pits of geysers. 

Will’s steps were almost silent on the polished floors—just the pressure of floorboards vibrating along their length, one after another until the polished steel and marble of the kitchen.

Will offered a brace of fish and his cheek in the same movement. The scales of the fish gleamed bright, his eyes brighter in the fluorescent lights.

“Beautiful,” Hannibal breathed.

Will’s laugh was sharp. “Is it?” The fish were strung by hooks in their mouths, irretrievably caught.

“Will,” Hannibal said, helpless.

He stepped forward, crowding into Hannibal’s space, taking it for his own. There was something simmering under the surface of his expression—somewhere in the darkness of the deepest stream, Will Graham’s thoughts lurked, hidden.

Without control, his mouth parted. “This is the world I wanted to make for you.”

Upstairs, footsteps clatter.

“For both of us.”

A house of stone, a stream just outside, the opera around the corner, a dozen art galleries populated with the leagues of artists.

Will turned as the footsteps make their way down the stairs, pounding against the skeleton of the house. Sun-kissed skin, blue eyes, dark hair. Abigail Hobbs had never looked more like her father, breathless.

Will stepped away.

“Dad?”

“Abigail.”

Hannibal watched each trembling step as Will stumbled towards Abigail with growing certainty.

“Will,” he said, again.

Will turned, a brief glance. He reached behind him. Twined their fingers together. Pulled Hannibal inextricably along.

Hannibal followed. The world he created was no longer his own.

 

***

 

Hannibal’s dining room in Baltimore was dark; the air smelled of loam, damp with rain, possibilities beginning to sprout from the silence of the ground. Will sat, facing forward.

The plants rustled, like whispers.

Into this whispering room, his footsteps echoed. There was a cocotte in his hands, hot with a flame still flickering. Two ortolan, drowned in Armagnac, roasting in the fire. It settled between them with heavy weight.

He opened his mouth to speak, but there were no words.

Will’s eyes closed, and opened again. His gaze was flat and steady. 

Hannibal sat. He plucked a bird from the fire.

Will did the same.

Like a marionette, following his every move. They raised the birds in unison, placed them into their mouths, and chewed: bones and all. Their teeth closed together, the muscles in their jaw moved in unison, and when they swallowed, it was together, as if they were one person: one body, one soul, one creature.

Will’s voice echoed, like a memory: “I was euphoric when I killed Freddie Lounds.”

“Tell me, Will, did your heart race when you murdered her?”

“No. It didn’t.”

Hannibal interrupted, “You didn’t.”

Will met his gaze then, sharp, alert. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

Hannibal said, “Blood and breath. They are only elements to fuel your radiance.”

The fire flickered.

Will studied the fire, “Fire destroys, creates.” He looked up. “This is mythical.”

Hannibal said, “It could have been.”

“And now?”

 

***

 

He burned a heart, an offering to the realm of the dead. The finest meals, he laid out in offering, wreathed in incense. 

He sketched everything that Will could need, careful brushes of graphite on smooth archival paper, thick to the touch. He built a fire in the courtyard, contained in a red lacquered pot. The sides were thin steel, round holes cut out for ventilation. The air filled with the smell of paper burning, of meat charring, sweet in the summer heat. 

The smoke wafted into the air, in thick dark coils, diffusing as it drifted towards the sun.

 

***

 

The flame, without any fuel, spluttered out on the table. Will’s face fell in shadow, in the dark of growing things.

Will’s voice was sharp. “You wanted me to burn.”

“You would have been radiant,” he said, mouth still warm with sweet flesh, the crunch of delicate bones between his teeth, fire in his belly. “Bones and all.”

 

***

 

He wore a ring on his finger, and its mate rested on varnished wood worn dark with age. Bedelia had picked it up, once, but it was sized to a dead man with larger fingers than her, and she never put it on.

He had purchased the bands when he arrived in Florence, with cash. He worked the white gold over his knuckle, still standing in the store, the shopkeeper watching with forced disinterest, its mate in its velvet-lined box in his pocket.

He introduced himself as Dr. Fell, recently widowed. He took up a post lecturing on Dante, in the same Italian that he’d learned in his youth. Bedelia, who should have been his wife, was not his sister despite being introduced as Lydia Fell, without any explanation.

He consummated their marriage in blood, hands deep in a heart still beating. There was a life in his hands, bloody and raw. The blood crept between the band and his finger, slick enough that he could work the ring off his finger without any extra effort.

He pulled the heart from the chest, the surgical cuts all for naught. In the end, all of Hannibal’s careful cuts had led to his death.

 

***

 

“The Chesapeake Ripper has surgical knowledge,” Will Graham said. They were in Hannibal’s office, Hannibal standing behind his desk, Will stalking the mezzanine. His steps resonated on the wooden floors, each step like a heart-beat rattling the ribs of the scaffolding of the building.

“A surgeon then?”

“Not necessarily.” His steps continued unerringly, perfectly steady. “But somebody with that knowledge.” At that he turned from the bookshelves to eye Hannibal coyly. “Somebody who changed their specialty, but wanted to keep the skills sharp.”

“Murder as practice?”

“It’s not murder.” He stopped, and in the stillness of the room, Hannibal could hear a rushing in his ears, like a river tumbling downstream. “Not according to the Ripper.”

 

***

 

Will came to him, a hand clutching his abdomen. Each step faltered as he stumbled, one foot after another, desperate to stay intact, entrails dripping from the ragged smile carved into his abdomen. “Out of practice, weren’t you?”

 

***

 

As curator, Hannibal spent his days among the priceless works of history. He cataloged the items, sought to restore them, thought to bring them to glory. Gloved in white, to keep from contaminating the artifacts, he lifted them to the light and studied all of their facets.

He thought to touch them with his bare hands. To let the oils soak into priceless manuscripts. To pry the pottery apart piece by piece. To reconstruct them in the future.

Under bright lights so much like the lights of the surgical theatre, he breathed new life into the pieces before setting them aside: to display, to return to storage, to be seen and not touched, to be admired and not used, to be elevated as art for their age alone. He made art with no intention for his work to be seen and recognized.

His hands were steady. Along the banks of the Chesapeake River, he had practiced art for many years, so quietly and steadily. Everybody had seen him. Nobody had seen him.

He had practice with deconstruction.

He had practice with reconstruction.

 

***

 

Stone by stone, he rebuilt the Uffizi Gallery: the foundations, the walls, the art on the walls. He built it to stand solid, unable to shatter with foundations embedded in the earth. It was only when he deemed it enough that he closed his eyes and let himself walk in, Will at his side. 

Will studied the walls with no expression.

Hannibal took him by the arm, led him with sure step. They stopped at all the paintings. Will read the labels beside each, face blank and empty. Hannibal studied Will instead. When he looked at the labels, the words blurred, indistinct, contorting and stretching like Rorschach blots.

In the halls of the gallery, their footsteps echoed. They were alone, only surrounded by art. The halls stretched on, empty, boundless, until they stood before the _Primavera_. 

Will stepped forward. He shook off Hannibal’s hand, sinking down into the bench before the painting. 

Hannibal followed.

“You displayed them like this,” Will said, finally. His voice rattled along each individual rib, like it would only take a snag for it to be caught. They slipped out without fail. He turned to Hannibal.

He saw. He was seen. 

 

***

 

“They burned me,” Will said. “Put me into an incinerator and fired me up.”

Hannibal’s hand tightened on the knife in his hand. In the kitchen, surrounded by the sterile stainless steel of his appliances and the polished countertops, the air took on the scent of ash.

“Ruined the meat. The hair was the first to go, of course. Then the flesh.”

First his flesh charred and sizzled under the heat. The muscles pulled tight as they burned, limbs contracting, as if he were a child, curling under stifling blankets for protection. The flesh from his face burned off, leaving only the flesh of his cheeks clinging to the bones. His organs shrank, the liquids evaporating from the heat. 

His brain burned.

Charred and blackened, his mind had burned under the heat, his body had crumbled to ash, and all that was left of Will Graham were four pounds of ash, and a Quantico photograph of a surly man who wouldn’t meet his eye.

Hannibal said, into the sweetbreads he was preparing, “They ruined the meat.”

Will’s chin lifted. “And doesn’t that bother you,” he murmured sardonically.

 

***

 

It had been a cold winter, the lakes frozen over thick enough to walk on without worry for cracks. It had been a winter where there was little food to scrounge up.

Will Graham had hunted a monster and brought the meat into Hannibal’s home, wrapped in brown wax paper and tied with twine.

They had, in tandem, sliced the meat thin, marinated it in ginger and soy sauce, served it with onions and tomatoes and fried potatoes and rice. They had stir-fried the meat until it was just cooked, the juices still running.

He could still smell: the salt of Will Graham’s sweat from the struggle, the blood oozing from his knuckles where he had broken bones with his bare hands.

Will stood before the stove-top, watching the fats sizzle. “Where did this come from?”

Hannibal flipped the thinly sliced meat. He didn’t know.

“Plenty of dead for you to serve me.”

Hannibal turned. They were in his kitchen, but this was not the Will Graham who had brought an offering into his house. There was a gaping void where Will had once been, a facsimile in his place made of ash and given form by promise.

“Perhaps I burned it in offering to you.”

“No.”

“No?”

Will reached into the pan, plucked a slice from the skillet. The meat was just barely cooked, the juices still oozing like blood, rising sluggishly to the surface from death. “You wouldn’t do that to the meat.”

Hannibal leaned forward. “Wouldn’t I?”

Will closed his eyes as he chewed and swallowed. Hannibal tracked the movements of his teeth, his jaws, his throat as he swallowed. Underneath the veneer of skin, Will Graham was so very alive.

 

***

 

In a house by a stream, Will lounged in his armchair set just within the kitchen. There was meat sizzling in a skillet, fragrant with oil and herbs. Hannibal bent over the stove, Abigail beside him.

She was learning how to cook.

Will had caught the fish. Hannibal had gutted it. And now Abigail was tending to the fish on the stove under Hannibal’s careful direction. She looked up for confirmation at every step, and every other step she also turned to glance at Will.

Will had been plied with whiskey when he had returned. It made him quiet, relaxed and easy. He still smelled of the river, shirt soaked, trousers plastered to his legs. He didn’t seem to notice. Occasionally, when a dog wandered into the kitchen to investigate the smells, Will would click his tongue and draw them to his side, where he ruffled ears and scratched ruffs.

Hannibal made the mistake of looking at Will. Like a fish on a hook, he found himself approaching Will, until he stood by his side. He thought to offer Will a refill, but no matter how much Will drank, the glass never emptied.

Will tilted his head towards him, and his hair was plastered to his skin with rain and sweat, his mouth drawn tight with pain. His clothes were dark with blood. He slumped in his chair, unable to hold himself upright with his abdominal muscles cut.

The smile gaped wide and open, and Hannibal couldn’t help but lean down and press his own lips to it.

 

***

 

He hung lanterns of white in the doorway. White for mourning. White for grief. At night, the candles in them flickering in their hollow round shells, they cast soft shadows against the ground. They twisted in the wind, as if it was the gasping breaths of Will Graham as he lay in his kitchen floor in a pool of his blood.

Will stood at the doorway, face dark and drawn. He touched the delicate paper with his fingers, and left bloodstains in its wake, bright and red as they dripped down the paper. Red like blood. Red like prosperity. Red like the promise of joyful marriage.

And in the light, Will’s face glowed: white with horror, red with promise.

 

***

 

For all of her desire to see beyond the veil, Bedelia grew tired of the view quickly. She had seen grief before, even if Hannibal turned to different trappings. Incense wreathed the halls, smoke lingered in fabrics, and Hannibal mourned with steady habit.

He delivered his lectures. He served his meals. He wore a ring on his finger that he purchased in a store in Florence, a single band attached to a promise that only he had made.

Bedelia walked to Vera dal 1926. She ordered two bottles of Batard-Montrachet and white truffles. She did so every week, with the same frequency that Hannibal sketched the latest fashions, tall mansions of stone, forests lush with life—and set them to burn. Every week, she walked to the grocer, ordered the same order, paid with cash, and walked home. Her heels clicked on the cobblestone. She stopped to gaze at the cameras watching the streets.

Smoke furled in the sky, dark, a message coiling through the air.

 

***

 

The dogs clattered to the door as Hannibal approached the house. They nosed him as he unlocked the door, muzzles soft, nails clicking on the wooden floor. Their tails whipped in the air.

Will was standing in the foyer, drawn in shadow.

“Will,” Hannibal said. 

Will said, “You’re back.” He clicked his tongue, and the dogs streamed past Hannibal to return to Will, nuzzling at his legs. The house was otherwise quiet, just breathing in the night. He passed a hand over their heads, fingers scratching at ruffs. They huffed, happy to be by Will.

Hannibal, coat over his arm, said, “Yes.” 

Will studied him. 

Hannibal stepped in. He hung the coat up, continued with his regular routine. “There’s no need for pleasantries,” he said.

“Because nothing between us has ever been pleasant.”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he unwound his scarf, hung it up with his coat. Will, hidden in the shadows with the dogs, watched quietly.

The paintings twisted and turned—not the art that had always adorned his walls in Baltimore, but new ones, ones that Hannibal had drawn and burned and drawn and burned and drawn and burned, overlayed upon each other like layer and layer of smoke, dark and indistinct. In the hallways, the rugs lay matted, one atop of another. 

Hannibal paused at the dogs, to run a hand over wiry hair and soft fur alike. Will retreated from his approach, drawing further back into darkness. With each step Hannibal took forward, Will took one step further into the shadows, as if they were connected.

As if they were conjoined.

Hannibal stopped, and as one, Will froze, and in the darkness, it seemed as though he was fading.

 

***

 

Agarwood smoke curled through the halls, soft and steady. It furled out from the windows, fading into the Florentine air. With his sense of smell, Hannibal could tell that the incense had been freshly lit, while he was out.

Bedelia was standing at the doorway when he entered, bags packed and at her feet. She met his gaze steadily, her hair perfectly coiffed, dressed impeccably, her breath calm and still, like the surface of a lake, reflecting.

Hannibal glanced behind her—to the altar of dark wood, Will Graham’s portrait gazing into the distance, agarwood freshly lit and burning.

Bedelia would never have lit incense to see direction from Will Graham. She had never even looked at the altar before, as if unwilling to see what would reflect back at her if she did so. 

But she had done so now. Sweetly, it curled in the air between them, smoke and mirrors, promises and promises.

He nodded towards the portrait. “What did you say to Will?”

With deliberate enunciation: “I believe that is between me and your husband.”

He did not respond to the epithet. He was familiar with Bedelia’s manipulations. He was comfortable with his role. “You know that I cannot let you go.”

“I have seen what you are.” She picked up her bags, stepped forward—

Hannibal waited.

“But in this world, I have never been Bluebeard’s wife.”

 

***

 

The house stood at the end of long path paved with cobblestone. They were worn smooth with rain and time, the cracks between the stones dusty with sediment. Will preferred it, because the stones remained cool, even in the summer—better for the dogs’ feet than concrete or asphalt. Hannibal preferred their aesthetics, the spectrum of gray stones, flecked with red and gold minerals that caught the light during sunrise and sunset.

As Hannibal made his way, step by step, up the path, the door swung open, and the dogs poured out. They sniffed at his feet as they passed by, but mostly they fanned out into the yard, where the smells were more engaging.

Will stared out at them from the doorway, in a worn t-shirt and boxers. He didn’t look at Hannibal, even as his heels clicked on the stone, even as he climbed the steps to the porch, even as he approached until he stood directly before Will, close enough to embrace.

“I’m home.”

Will gazed into the distance. Hannibal didn’t try to trace his gaze. He knew that there was nothing behind him.

Slowly, Will dragged his gaze to Hannibal. “Are you?” Will rasped, breath ragged and wet with pain, collapsing, dark like blood in moonlight. 

 

***

 

He stood before the shrine. Tradition dictated that he kneel, that he bow his head in piety—in regret. But Hannibal had lived too long without regret to sham at it now. Instead, he stood straight, dressed in wool and silk and pride. 

Everyday, he stood before Will Graham’s portrait. The expression on his face: surly, distant, thoughtful, jubilant—was ever set in his memory. He set a mug of coffee down: dry on the tongue, astringent and bitter. Threaded through the scent of burnt grounds, he could smell the agarwood incense: strong and sweet, and underneath the fragrance he could smell the ash as it smoldered: decay and death.

The smoke clung to the back of his throat: dry like regret. 

 

***

 

Will Graham came to him damp with rain, his curls plastered against his skull, jacket soaked, shoes dripping. His footsteps squelched against the tile as he crept into the kitchen in the dead of night. He checked every room along the way, opening doors, leaving dark blemishes across hardwood floors. Hannibal would never be able to scrub the stains out.

“You ran,” Will whispered, his voice echoing in the empty hallways, reverberating across stainless steel countertops. “You ran.”

Hannibal caught him as he stumbled closer. Held him in his arms. Will Graham sagged into his hold, dead-weight, abdominal muscles ripped apart, unable to hold himself upright.

“You ran,” Will whispered, and it was an accusation. “You ran and you left me behind.”

 

***

 

The pencil scratched against the paper, the graphite dark against pale cream. Hannibal rested the sketchbook against his knee, scalpel-sharpened pencil held loosely in his other hand, as he sat before the _Primavera_. Despite the hour, the halls were empty, silent except for his quiet heartbeat counterpoint to the long strokes of pencil on paper. 

And, in the distance, the steady beat of footsteps approached from behind him. In the Uffizi Gallery, every sound was transformed into art.

Hannibal turned. Will approached, with steady steps like the echoing chords of a march. 

“If I could see you every day, I would remember this one,” Hannibal said.

Will’s mouth split open, in a garish smile. “This one?” he repeated. He sat, and they stared—not at each other, but at the _Primavera_ before them, spring in her naked glory. “This one, or this one?”

It was dark and raining. The streets of the Baltimore neighborhood where Hannibal had made his home for many years was slick, and when Will slipped into Hannibal’s house, it was with his clothes so sodden they appeared black—

Until the knife slipped through his abdominal muscles, and Hannibal saw that rain and blood were very different.

“You’d like to remember this one,” Will murmured, in stone chambers full of art. “You’ve always loved beauty. You’ve always wanted to elevate the world to art.”

Hannibal turned. Will slumped forward, curling around his wound. Blood pooled in his hands, staining the stone floors. It crept towards the wall, dark like it was nighttime again, despite the bright lights of the gallery. And, in the surface, Hannibal could see the _Primavera_ , like a shadow, reflected.

“But you’ll never forget this one.”

And outside, it was raining, and spring had yet to arrive.

 

***

 

Will stared out at the city before them. “Of all the places you chose to run to,” he murmured.

Florence is where he became a man.

Hannibal whispered, “I would have liked to show you Florence.” 

Florence is where he became a husband.

Will continued, as if Hannibal had never spoken. “I’ve never been to Florence.” His voice was low and thoughtful. “Can’t picture myself here.” He turned, framed by the setting sun. It caught his skin, glowing red across his cheeks. “Not my sort of place.”

Florence is where he lost Will Graham.

 

***

 

In the heat of summer, Will Graham preferred to spend his time outdoors. He took to the stream, hauling in fish after fish. Hannibal preferred to watch from a distance as Will waded into the cool water, casting his line. 

The sun was high in the sky, beating down over their shoulders. It suffused Hannibal with a steady heat, as if he were roasting in his canvas suit, leaving a thin sheen of sweat that crept along his skin. Will seemed unaffected.

Back to Hannibal, Will’s movements were deft and practiced, water up to his knees and growing ever higher. Hannibal was frozen, unable to leave the banks even as the water licked at his feet, his ankles, his knees.

“What have you caught?” Hannibal called, as the water surged to his chest.

Will turned, hands dark in the sunlight of the stream. As he approached, Hannibal could see it take form, a heart, heavy and dark with blood, pounding weakly, as if struggling to live.

“Time and heat,” Will said, an echo rippling across the water. “It’ll break down the toughest heart.”

The water was clear like glass, Will’s form hazy and indefinite through the rising rush of the stream, growing louder and louder as it rushed by: Baltimore, Florence, Paris—

 

***

 

He traveled by car, first. It rattled across borders, engine rumbling, chassis rattling across back-country roads.

“Do you know where you’re going?” Will whispered.

“Somewhere you’ve been,” Hannibal mouthed back.

Then by plane, across the ocean, the lights dim and low, the windows shut. Hannibal closed his eyes, as if to sleep.

“You won’t like it there.”

“As long as you’re there,” Hannibal replied.

After the plane had landed, the luggage wheeled out, the furnishings carted and waiting to arrive later, it was just Hannibal, alone in the bright lights and jeering crowd.

And Will’s hands were dark with blood as he gasped, “No. Not your life.”

 

***

 

The basement is frigid in winter and blazing in the summer. For all of the trappings that his lawyers have negotiated for, the temperature deep in the bowels of this dungeon is something that remains out of their control. Books, Hannibal has. Wallpaper for the walls. A toilet. The trappings of civilization are within his reach.

He stands, and with steady steps he makes his way to the shrine: a wooden table, pushed against the wall. He is not allowed glass—too easy to turn into a weapon. Instead, a printed photo of Will Graham is tacked onto the wall with masking tape. A plastic cup filled with sand sits atop the table. A stick of incense, unlit, droops forlornly. Hannibal can barely smell the agarwood through the mildew.

He stares at Will Graham. Will does not stare back. Hannibal closes his eyes. Not to pray. Nor to seek advice. Instead, he closes his eyes and returns— 

It is their one-year anniversary, today.

It has been one year since Hannibal has been incarcerated.

 

***

 

_All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story._  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much to alanna, ellie, adzusai, pann, rose, and every single person who's been patient with me since i started this story. i thought i would never write another ghost-marriage au after a house in the sun, but apparently i can never stay away from ghosts for too long.
> 
> this au draws from chinese culture and traditions, specifically [chinese ghost marriage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_ghost_marriage).
> 
> thank you for reading.
> 
>  
> 
> ❤️ Enjoyed it? Try the following options:
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